AZERBAIJANI ANSWER TO OIL GLUT: BATHE IN IT
By Andrew E. Kramer

International Herald Tribune, France
Nov 28 2006

NAFTALAN, Azerbaijan: Outside this improbable spa in a remote part
of the former Soviet Union, oil rigs bob on a hardscrabble plain of
rocks, shrubs and rusting industrial equipment that could easily pass
for a stretch of West Texas.

Inside, Ramil Mutukhov, a lanky 25- year-old, prepares to be pampered
and preened, scrubbed and peeled in a bath of pure crude oil. He
undresses, hangs his trousers and sweatshirt on a peg, pulls off socks
and underwear and folds up a wad of brown paper towels. He will need
those later.

Then he steps into a mess of what looks, smells and flows like used
engine oil. "It’s wonderful," he said, up to his neck in oil in a
sort of human lube job.

The petroleum spas of Naftalan in central Azerbaijan, one of the
little- known but once wildly popular vacation spots of the Soviet
Union, are having an unlikely revival in a country so awash in oil
that people are literally swimming in it.

Here in Naftalan, visitors bathe once a day in the local crude. They
say, and doctors here support them in the claim, that it relieves
joint pain, cures psoriasis, calms nerves and beautifies the skin –
never mind that Western experts say the practice may be carcinogenic.

Hoping to tap into the worldwide spa boom, Health Center, where
Mutukhov took a dip in crude recently, opened a year ago. Another
spa is under construction and two more are planned.

"Two years ago, all this was ruins," said Ilgar Guseynov, owner and
director of Health Center. "Every day, every month, Azerbaijan is
growing richer."

At their peak in the 1980s, Naftalan spas drew 75,000 visitors a
year. That flow became a trickle after war broke out between Azerbaijan
and ethnic Armenians in nearby Karabakh, in 1988, and with trips to
the spas no longer free under the Soviet vacation bureaucracy.

Five of the six Soviet-era resorts were converted into glum housing
for refugees, for example.

But this summer, 350 or so people visited the Health Center, according
to Guseynov. That was up from 250 last summer. A 15-day course costs
$450, including meals.

"Azerbaijan is standing on its own feet now," Amir Aslan, deputy
mayor of Naftalan, said in an interview. The town is banking on growth
in oil-spa demand, which he said would pull this dusty place out of
poverty. Aslan has his own project for a $3 million, 20-bath spread
and is looking for investors.

In her office overlooking the oil field that supplies Health Center,
Gyultikin Suleymanova, the head doctor, said that the local crude is
unusual because it contains little natural gasoline or other lighter
fractions of petroleum and is thus safe.

Naftalan crude is about 50 percent naphthalene, an ingredient best
known as the stuff of mothballs. It is also an active ingredient in
coal-tar soaps, which are used by dermatologists to treat psoriasis,
though in lower concentrations.

Authorities like the U.S. National Institutes of Health classify coal
tar as a possible carcinogenic. Suleymanova says it is not a carcinogen
when you bathe in it. The baths are lukewarm and last 10 minutes.

The therapeutic benefits come from natural antibiotic agents that
seep into the skin, Suleymanova said.

Arzu Mirzeyev is the bath master. With a green frock, jeans stained
with oil spots and a mustache, he looks for all the world like a
gasoline station attendant and he has a job to match. He changes
the oil.

Each bath uses about a barrel of crude, which is recycled back into a
communal tank for future bathers. Mirzeyev also uses paper towels to
wipe bathers clean, a long, hard process that involves several showers.

Mirzeyev said he liked his job.

Until Azerbaijan’s economy picked up in the past two years, the
40-year-old father of three worked seasonally as a laborer in Ukraine,
where wages were higher. At the spa, he said, "If we have visitors,
then we have work."

Unlike the oil from Azerbaijan’s offshore deposits, which is sold
internationally under the brand Azeri Light crude, Naftalan oil is
too heavy to have much commercial value. Luckily, as most of the bath
attendants and patients seemed to smoke, it does not catch fire easily.

The resort has 10 tubs, 5 for women, 5 for men. The tubs are not
scoured between baths. As might be expected, they have perhaps the
world’s worst bathtub rings – greasy and greenish-brown.

Oil has been Azerbaijan’s ticket for a long time. Oil seepages have
been here since at least the 13th century, when Marco Polo passed
through and took note of the place. A reedy marsh, about the size of
a football field, has a black film of oil on the water. The site was
a caravansary on the Silk Road to China.

Later, Azerbaijan’s larger oil reserves on the Caspian coast were
developed by the Nobel brothers of Sweden.